PHILOSOPHY and RELIGION in GERMAN IDEALISM Studies in German Idealism

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PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM Studies in German Idealism

Series Editor: Reinier Munk, Leiden University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Advisory Editorial Board: Frederick Beiser, Syracuse University, U.S.A. George di Giovanni, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Helmut Holzhey, University of Zürich, Switzerland Detlev Pätzold, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Robert Solomon, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, U.S.A.

VOLUME 3 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM

Edited by

WILLIAM DESMOND Catholic University of Louvain

ERNST-OTTO ONNASCH Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

and

PAUL CRUYSBERGHS Catholic University of Louvain

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS NEW YORK, BOSTON, DORDRECHT, LONDON, MOSCOW eBook ISBN: 1-4020-2325-1 Print ISBN: 1-4020-2324-3

No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without written consent from the Publisher

Created in the United States of America

Visit Springer's eBookstore at: http://ebooks.springerlink.com and the Springer Global Website Online at: http://www.springeronline.com This book is dedicated to Ludwig Heyde (†) CONTENTS

Preface ix

WILLIAM DESMOND, ERNST-OTTO ONNASCH and PAUL CRUYSBERGHS Introduction xi

WALTER JAESCHKE Philosophy of Religion after the Death of God 1

MARTIN MOORS Kant on Religion in the Role of Moral Schematism 21

DANIEL BREAZEALE “Wishful Thinking.” Concerning Fichte’s Interpretation of the Postulates of Reason in his Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (1792) 35

LUDWIG HEYDE (†) The Unsatisfied Enlightenment. Faith and Pure Insight in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 71

STEPHEN HOULGATE Religion, Morality and Forgiveness in Hegel’s Philosophy 81

SANDER GRIFFIOEN The Finite does not Hinder. Hegel’s Philosophy of Christian Religion placed against the Backdrop of Kant’s Theory of the Sublime 111

TOM ROCKMORE Hegel on Reason, Faith and Knowledge 125

WILLIAM DESMOND Religion and the Poverty of Philosophy 139 vii viii PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM

Contributing Authors 171

Index 173 PREFACE

This book contains the selected proceedings of a conference on Religion in German Idealism which took place in Nijme- gen (Netherlands) in January 2000. The conference was or- ganized by the Centre of German Idealism, which co-ordi- nates the research on classical German philosophy in the Netherlands and in Belgium. Generous support of the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has made this conference possible. A few months after the conference Ludwig died, and this circumstance unexpectedly delayed efforts to bring the proceedings of the conference to published form. We are now happy to present those proceedings, dedicated to the memory of the founding father of the Centre. It was a great joy to work with Ludwig; it was an even greater joy to be reckoned amongst his friends. It was part of Ludwig’s distinctive charisma that he was able to combine friendship together with collaboration in philosophical and scholarly work.

William Desmond Ernst-Otto Onnasch Paul Cruysberghs

ix INTRODUCTION

WILLIAM DESMOND, ERNST-OTTO ONNASCH and PAUL CRUYSBERGHS

The studies in this book testify to the intimate relation of philosophy and religion in German idealism, a relation not also devoid of tensions, and indeed conflicts. Idealism gave expression to a certain affirmation of the autonomy of philosophical reason, but this autonomy was one that tried to take into account the importance of religion. Sometimes the results of this claim to autonomy moved towards criticism of religion. Sometimes the results claimed to be more con- structive in reforming the relation of philosophy and religion. Sometimes the outcome was a new questioning of philosophy itself and a different appreciation of religion. All of these possibilities are represented in the studies of this book. It will be helpful first to note a number of crucial considerations that serve to define the problematic situation of religion in that era, and the relation of philosophical reflection to religion. We might begin with some more general considerations before turning to more specific details. Many of these considerations still define our current situation, and point to the continued significance of a study of German idealism. Three major considerations can be noted: first, relative to the devalued thereness of nature in a mechanistic world picture; second, relative to the human being as autonomous and claiming to be an end in self; third, relative to the sense of divine transcendence as other to human autonomy. First, relative to nature, we encounter the tendency of the objectifying sciences (then Newtonian mechanism) to lead to a valueless thereness, shorn of immanent traces of the divine. One thinks then, by contrast, of the appeal of Spino- xi xii PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM zism and pantheism: these we might see as reactions against the valueless objectivity of mechanistic science, and as efforts to try to regain some sense of the immanence of the divine. Think here also of the manner in which Hegel and his generation were captive in different ways to the dream of Greece. Greece held before the gaze of that generation a vision of immanent wholeness in which nature was saturated with ambiguous but real signs of the divine. Second, there is the central concern with the human being as an end in itself, partly defined over against the otherwise valueless thereness of nature. It is interesting to re- mark on the way these two sides proceed in tandem: nature hugely objectified; the human being more and more subjec- tified. For if there are no traces of the divine in nature, or no presence of inherent value, then human beings alone, it seems, can take on this function of being ends in themselves. This is very clear in Kant where the human being alone is an end in self in a nature otherwise devoid of such ends. Consult the last half of the Critique of Judgment where this is central. There the issue is fundamentally the possibility of a theology in such a nature and with respect to such a vision of human morality. As one recalls, Kant alone allows the possibility of an ethical theology, in admittedly a very qualified sense. Perhaps the difficulty here continues and masks the per- plexity as experienced earlier by Pascal: the human experience of fear and solitude in the immensity of the strange cosmic spaces. Unlike Kant, Pascal does not find his heart filled with wonder at the starry skies above. He finds silence and emptiness. And indeed there is a sense in which Kant did too, in that apart from man, there seems to be no inherent end in nature. Perhaps Kant masked from himself his proximity to the pathos of Pascal with a moral consolation. Others will not be so morally kind on themselves or on such a valueless nature. Nor indeed did Pascal draw consolation from the moral law within. In the human heart he also found horror and something monstrous: wretchedness, though also grandeur. Pascal was a mathematical genius who yet had finesse for the excesses of the human heart. And it is true that the times we are dealing with here found INTRODUCTION xiii more peace in the vision of the human being as morally autonomous than as thus excessive in the Pascalian sense. But the excess will reassert itself in due course. Third, bound up with a dedivinized nature and a self- affirming autonomous humanity, there follows the problematic place of all appeals to transcendence. This is perhaps the nub of the issue with respect to religion and its relation to philosophy. The culture of Enlightenment was a culture of reason, which affirms the native power of the human mind to accomplish through itself its quest for truth. This seemed evident, not only in the increasing autonomy claimed by the particular sciences, but in the most radical claim made for philosophical reason itself, as the epitome of reason that determines itself and that in seeking its own justification finally must be self-justifying. Does not this seem the very essence of philosophy: autonomous reason, determining through itself its own resources to know, and thus also determining for itself the proper paths and suc- cesses possible for truth? Not only does this create the more obvious tension between autonomous reason and theology as appealing to faith, it also shapes a view of the proper culture of humanity. If self-determining reason is the highest human power, all of human culture is to be seen in its light; and hence also any appeal to a transcendence that is other to our autonomy has to justify itself before the tribunal of that reason. But in the nature of the case here, any appeal to transcendence must come before that tribunal making a case for itself that departs from the terms on which autonomy de- cides the case. Any such appeal to transcendence clearly comes before this tribunal already hobbled by its reference to the ultimate as beyond human autonomy and self- determination. From the viewpoint of this autonomous reason, every such “beyond” must appear suspect. One might suggest indeed that there is not only a tension between the respective emphases of autonomy and transcendence; there may well be a certain antinomy between them. If transcendence is absolute, one will have to relativize autonomy. If autonomy is absolute, one will have to relativize transcendence. If a certain form of being religious is xiv PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM tempted to the former possibility, a certain form of philosophy is tempted towards the latter. It could also be said that many religious people and philosophers tried to negotiate some modus vivendi between autonomy and transcendence. Given these considerations about nature, the human being and divine transcendence, one might see the relation of idealism to religion as itself stressed in this tension of autonomy and transcendence. In the main, we find a tendency to give the pride of place to self-determining reason, but in a manner that tries, in its own way, to find some justified place for transcendence. One consequence of this, however, is that then transcendence tends to end up in the form of an immanent transcendence. Thus in the confluence of an ethos of autonomy, with the attractions of Spinozistic pantheism, as well as the allure of Greek immanence, the traditional claims of God’s transcendence, such as comes to us from the Judeo-Christian heritage, will call out for reas- sessment, if not reformulation. Perhaps we find this most radically in the reconfiguration of Christianity by Hegel in his doctrine of the worldly immanence of spirit. For Hegel tried to take into account all the factors present in this confluence of influences. In general, the idealistic philosophers tended to follow the way of the Whole or the One; hence they tended to relativize any transcendence as other (a mere “beyond”), since this seems to lead back to dualism and hence to reduplicate what they saw as the problem, rather than solving it. The Kantians try to assert human autonomy together with some very qualified form of divine transcendence vis-a-vis the moral law. Thinkers like Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi insist on a kind of “either/or”: either autonomous reason, but then we end in Spinozism, pantheism, naturalism, atheism; or else a primal source of knowing, always already given, call it “faith.” Either nihilism or God: there is no in-between. By contrast, philosophies of mediation are not satisfied with this lack of a third, Hegel especially, and attempt to find resources of mediation in both religion and philosophy. Here again though, mediation finally stands under the ultimacy of philosophy whose rational mediation is more absolute in form than the representational mediation of religion. And INTRODUCTION xv this, of course, is rejected in that form by Kierkegaard who, though a foe of German idealism, is so steeped in its resources that it is impossible now to read the idealists, especially Hegel, without hearing in the distance his howl of protest. Mention was made above, in relation to Pascal, of the re- turn of the excessive. Here one might say also that the idealistic tilt to autonomous self-determination and immanent transcendence is only a short step from the more negative deconstructions of religion by radical atheists who use the instruments of idealistic dialectic but turn away from the speculative and reconciling purpose we find in Hegel. Feuerbach and Marx are the black sheep of the idealistic family, as Nietzsche is the mutant descendent in the family of sovereign autonomy, branding with his mark of “no” all those whom he saw guilty of a comprised accommodation with religion, especially Christianity. What was the moral of Nietzsche’s preaching? Dare to be radically autonomous; be transcendence oneself, there is no other; transcendence is our own transcendence! During the high noon of German idealism, we find re- sponses mainly drawing on the resources of Kant’s turn to transcendental subjectivity, while yet aiming to complete the critique of mere “givenness,” and hence to complete the critique of that trace of dependence on the divine that is the traditional hall mark of religious transcendence. We are en- joined to complete the Kantian turn by recovering an immanent sense of rich nature and of human self-transcendence as evident in the diverse spheres of historical culture. After the high noon of German idealism, we find the social self- transcendence towards the perfected immanent society of Marx. We also find the individual creative self-transcendence of the Übermensch. We also leave the space of Spino- zistic geometry for that of Dionysian rhapsody, a space of poetic autonomy not rational. This poetry of self-creation is still today a very widespread response to the stress between autonomy and transcendence, but it has its roots in the classical period of German idealism. Its continuation also causes one to ask: suppose the tilt towards autonomy in the relation of autonomy and transcendence were not accepted; xvi PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM suppose there were a transcendence ultimate than our autonomy and which implied that our autonomy had to be relativized; would we not have to consider if we need an en- tire rethinking of the relation of philosophy and religion, a rethinking which would not coincide with the efforts of that era, both in its achievements and its deconstructed after- math?

These are large and general considerations, but let us now look in a little more detail at how religion became one of the key issues in classical German philosophy. It took some time before this issue assumed its full dimensions. A key event was the questioning of the central dogma of the Auf- klärung – its faith in reason – by Jacobi in his Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza, first published in 1785. With this publication a debate arose in which nearly all major figures of the time participated. At stake in this historically crucial discussion was the hegemony of reason which, according to Jacobi, did not support the essential truths of religion, but rather led necessarily to a flagrant atheism. Clearly in question here was something at the very core of philosophy itself. Traditionally, philosophy claimed to be the mother of reason, caring for things rational and their growth. That reason should lead to nihilism, as Jacobi’s provocative criticism suggested, was indeed an “explosion” in the German intellectual world, and not only there. In our time, a version of the same issue still troubles many minds. Although the words may have changed, the battle in philosophy today is still between reason and something other that reason is not able to acknowledge properly, something other of such a high significance for human life that reason is also incapa- ble of replacing it. More strongly put, the claim is that every undertaking of reason must inevitably take us away from the truth embedded in this “something other.” Reason, it is said, is the faculty with covers up and hides all essential truths. It must be asked if this leads in the end to a form of INTRODUCTION xvii irrationalism. If it is true that reason takes us away from the very truths of life, do we than end up in an “Entweder- Oder,” in the unresolved dilemma between reason and belief? Or is there a way or ways of surpassing the dilemma posed by such an “either-or?” Classical German philosophy can be interpreted as the quest to go beyond the boundaries of discussion set by the Pantheism Controversy (Pantheismusstreit).1 This controversy began in the summer of 1783, and was at its height in late 1786. Kant himself had perhaps already suggested some guidelines for a solution to the problem in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft of 1781. Of course, it was only 12 years later that Kant himself offered a fully developed theory on religion in his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (1793). The Kantian response to the controversy is formulated by Carl Leonhard Reinhold in his Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie which appeared in 1786.2 The first letter in this publication formulates the logical structure of the arguments in the Pantheism Controversy in the following way: “The incompatibility of these doctrinal systems is made so very clear, that the defenders of these systems prove themselves wrong as soon they start to prove the system, and in the end what is shown is that they have merely refuted a different opinion without having proved their own.”3 Reinhold’s analysis of the situation is based upon the Kantian doctrine of the antinomies, as applied to the historical situation of the Pantheism Controversy. In ac-

1 For the background to this controversy, see the fine study of Freder- ick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason. German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1987) chapter 2. 2 These Briefe appeared from August 1786 till September 1787 in Der teutsche Merkur. A revised and enlarged version of these Briefe is published by Reinhold under the same title in two volumes in Leipzig 1790 and 1792. 3 Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie, Erster Brief: “Bedürfniß einer Kritik der Vernunft,” in: Der Teutsche Merkur (August 1786) 111-2: “Die Unverträglichkeit dieser Lehrgebäude ist so sehr ins reine ge- bracht, daß die Anhänger derselben, … sich … widerlegen …, sobald sie zu beweisen anfangen; und am Ende zeigt sich, daß sie blos eine fremde Meynung widerlegten, ohne die ihrige bewiesen zu haben.” xviii PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM cordance with the dialectical triad concerning the development of metaphysics that Kant introduced – namely, “dogmatism, scepticism, criticism”4 – Reinhold argues that the viewpoint of dogmatism must necessarily in the process of Aufklärung give rise to antinomies, which can only be solved by the critical standpoint of the Kantian philosophy. Doubt brings up the question of whether a universally satisfactory answer to the existence of God is possible at all. According to Reinhold, the question facing philosophy is whether such an answer can be at all possible.5 The overarching question is: “What is possible in terms of reason itself.”6 Reinhold claims to show that there is an antinomy at the heart of the Pantheism Controversy which lies in a mistaken understanding of the relation of reason and belief.7 He believed the matter had been properly addressed some years earlier with the publication of Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft. For in that book we find Kant’s defence of a faith in reason (Ver- nunftglaube).8 In his third and fourth letter Reinhold offers an account which tries to restore the unity of reason and belief on the basis of this Kantian faith in reason. Reinhold’s Briefe were met with the greatest of interest. They turned Reinhold into the rising star of the new ways of philosophizing that we then emerging. Soon after the publication of the Briefe he became a professor in Jena (1787). There he encountered a huge audience of students who longed to become part of the intellectual revolution whose contagion was felt by many people at that time.9 In the years following, however, a front was formed that stood against the new Kantian philosophy. Here we meet some of the so- called Popular Philosophers (Popularphilosophen) who held that Kantian philosophy did not penetrate the true nature of

4 Cf. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Riga 1781, ix (page numbers on Kant according Akademie-Ausgabe). 5 Cf. Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie, Erster Brief, cf. note 3, 115. 6 Cf. Ibid. 116. 7 Cf. Ibid. 135. 8 Cf. Ibid. 137-8. 9 To offer some figures: In 1793, the year before Reinhold left Jena, almost 600 of the 860 officially registered students visited his lectures. INTRODUCTION xix reason with its common sense (gesunder Menschenverstand) as they interpreted it. Common sense should be the final authority for morality and religion. In the end, however, such a common sense philosophy failed to provide any new or remarkable insights into the issue concerning religious belief. One significant consequence of the Pantheism Contro- versy was that governmental authorities began to interfere with the freedom of speech and publication. In Prussia the new king Friedrich Willhelm II (who ruled from 1786 to 1797) commissioned his minister of culture, justice and ec- clesiastical affairs J. Chr. Wöllner to promulgate in 1788 a decree allowing the censoring of publications dealing with religion. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was one of the first victims of this decree. The censoring authorities at the university of Halle withheld his first publication, Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung. But after the intervention of the new dean at the faculty of theology the book was allowed to be printed. Fichte wrote his book in a few weeks, but its success was overwhelming. The book printer Hartung made two versions, one for Königsberg and environs, and one for the rest of Germany. This last version appeared anonymously in the Easter of 1792. Due to the style and spirit in which the book was written, many readers took it to be the long expected study on religion by Kant. In August of 1792 Kant made a public announcement denying that he was the author of this book. Its real author was rather the candidate in theology, Fichte. Fichte became famous overnight. Fichte’s first publication dealt with the Kantian claim that revelation does not enlarge our theoretical knowledge. As a consequence, this question becomes urgent: within a non-theoretical understanding of revelation, how then is it possible to speak meaningfully about God and revelation? There exists a tension in Kant’s critical philosophy between duty and duty’s actual practicability, given that the moral good depends for its realization on the external world, i.e. nature. According to Fichte, this can only be resolved if nature in its totality is predetermined by a moral being who is God. In God moral necessity and absolute physical freedom are unified. Therefore the existence of God must be presup- xx PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM posed in the same necessary way as is the moral law. In a outpouring of enthusiasm, Reinhold wrote to his friend Bag- gesen: “The riddle is now solved, now I know that revelation is possible and how far!”10 Daniel Breazeale deals further below with Fichte’s contribution. A year after Fichte’s book appeared Kant published his own extended study of religion: Religion innerhalb der Gren- zen der bloßen Vernunft (1793). The first part of this book appeared in the famous Berlinische Monatsschrift, which the editors in early 1792 had moved outside Prussia to Jena because of the hated decree of Wöllner. Consequently the book was not issued under Prussian law. This was perceived as a slap in the face to the keepers of Prussian law, especially since the Prussian censors had already rejected a part of the publication. Notwithstanding this, the main purpose of this book was to show that morality leads inevitably to religion. Reason needs religion, because otherwise what Kant saw as the human being’s predilection for evil (Hang zum Bösen) would have the same right of reason as our predisposition for the good (Anlage zum Guten). The conception of religion Kant here offers differs from his earlier conception, especially as expressed in the Kritk der reinen Vernunft where religion has a founding relevance for morality. Religion, as Kant now defines it, becomes rather “knowledge of all duties as divine commands.”11 Christianity is interpreted as founded in a moral principle that accords with the moral law of an autonomous obligating reason. Not belief but the belief in reason (Vernunftglaube) is the condition of the pos-

10 Cf. Johann Gottlieb Fichte im Gespräch. Berichte der Zeitgenossen, hrsg. E. Fuchs (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog 1978 ff.) vol. 1, 35: “Baggesen! dieses Räthsel ist nun aufgelöset … Ich weiß nun, daß ich nur die Hälfte der religiösen Überzeugung besessen ha- be, welche unsere philosophische Moraltheologie gewährt; ich weiß … nun, daß Offenbarung möglich ist, und inwiefern sie möglich ist, be- greife diese Möglichkeit aus der Natur der praktischen Vernunft, und glaube an die Göttlichkeit des Christenthums im eigentlichsten Vers- tande.” 11 Cf. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Riga: J.F. Hartknoch 1788) 233 and Kritik der Urtheilskraft (Berlin/Libau: La- garde 1790) 477. INTRODUCTION xxi sibility for founding the moral authority of the moral law. The contribution of Martin Moors below has more to say about this. It is this later view and not the earlier conception that Fichte anticipated in his Versuch. Religion offers only the supporting means for our being more strongly determined by the moral law.12 And because religion is always contami- nated with sensuality (Sinnlichkeit), religion is said to be founded in the need that sensuality conveys. In any case, for Fichte to understand God as a substance is impossible and contradictory. The living and active moral-order is God; any other conception of God we cannot grasp.13 Belief in the moral world-order supplies us with the “true religion of joy- fully performing the right.”14 A difficulty that is not solved by Fichte is the relation between the moral world-order and the individual intelligence. According to Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, to determine that relation we must speak of the absolute. He char- acterizes the elevation to this common ground of the moral world-order and intelligence as the “system of providence (System der Vorsehung), i.e. religion in the only true meaning of the word.”15 This is a remarkable move. Fichte stated that the moral world-order was God, whereas Schelling places religion at a higher level, a level above the moral world-order and particular individuality. In this conception Schelling, in fact, restores something of the distinction between the conditioned and the unconditioned that was made by Jacobi in his Spinoza-book, a book read by the students in Tübingen with great enthusiasm. Jacobi argued that all demonstration can only be conditioned and thus can only

12 Cf. Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (1792). J.G. Fichte- Gesamtausgabe, hrsg. von R. Lauth and H. Gliwitzky (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog) Abt. I, Bd. 1, 58 (hereafter GA) 13 Cf. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Ueber den Grund unseres Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung (1798), GA I/5:354-56. 14 Cf. Ibidem, 356. 15 Cf. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, System des transzendenta- len Idealismus (1800). Sämmtliche Werke, hrsg. von K.F.A. Schelling, (München: Cotta 1856-61) Abt. I, Bd. 1, 601. xxii PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM give us mediated and finite knowledge. Nevertheless, the possibility of thinking the conditioned, according to Jacobi, also implies the unconditioned. Thus conditioned knowledge presupposes an unconditioned certainty (Gewißheit) that itself is not confined to the conditioned. A conditioned character belongs to the finite nature of beings, i.e. a certain positiveness to be this or that; but an infinite and unsurpassable (unhintergehbar) being must precede all such finite being. Hölderlin calls this being an “absolute being” or a “being per se” (Seyn schlechthin) that precedes all division into object and subject.16 About this primal or unconditioned being we possess an unconditioned certainty whereby it is present in our finite being. This shows that this absolute being is not the equivalent of Spinoza’s immanent conception of substance. The presence of the unconditioned in the conditioned, it is claimed, makes available to us an ade- quate definition of the essential Christian doctrine of revelation. The unconditioned can thus be interpreted as the personal God, present in us but also unsurpassable by our de- terminative, hence finite knowledge. Schelling’s new conception of God and religion was the result of discussions concerning the practical religion of Kant and the supernaturalism of Gottlob Christian Storr, the very influential professor in theology at the Tübinger Stift. According to Storr, the Kantian and Fichtian philosophies of religion, in the end, are nothing other than systems of accommodation, i.e. forms of religious naturalism. This understanding seems to be shared by the young Schelling, as M. Franz has pointed out.17 According to such a system of accommodation, the founders of Christianity – Jesus Christ included – adjusted their message to what people in that time were able to understand. The consequence of such a system of accommodation, associated with J.S. Semler, was that the whole of revelation could not be understood as

16 Cf. Friedrich Hölderlin, Urtheil und Seyn (ca. 1795). Sämtliche Wer- ke. Große Stuttgarter Ausgabe, Bd. 4, hrsg. von F. Beißner und A. Beck (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1961) 216-17. 17 Michael Franz, Schellings Tübinger Platon-Studien (Göttingen: Van- denhoeck & Ruprecht 1996) 119. INTRODUCTION xxiii the word of God. Storr, by contrast, took the position that the Christian writings originate in the authority of God and thus the Bible must be interpreted and understood in this way. Not only the Bible, but also the articles of Christian faith – i.e. the Trinity, original sin, the divinity of Jesus Christ – must be understood as an authentic part of revelation. These symbols of Christian faith have always led to various forms of heterodoxy or even heresy. In this context, the dogma of the Trinity is of great interest. Christian Frie- drich Rößler, professor of history at Tübingen, deconstructed the conception, handed down by Johann Jacob Brucker, that Platonism has exercised influence on the Church fathers up to the Council of Nicaea. The self- mediation of God in the dogma of the divine trinity is taken by Schelling and Hegel as the finest expression and unsur- passed explanation of the absolute. Neither followed the view common in the early 1790s in Tübingen under the influence of Kantian philosophy which interpreted all Chris- tian “dogmas as postulates of practical reason.”18 This interpretation of Christian belief provoked Fichte’s critique of revelation, as Hegel points out and Schelling agrees.19 Both philosophers agreed – at that time – that there is a revelation and that the content of this is impossible to surpass by reason, even though this revelation still is something reasonable. The last point is important, because Johann Friedrich Flatt, the talented student of Storr and the most philosophical thinker in Tübingen, had claimed that Kantian critical philosophy, though it does not ignore the necessity of revelation for practical philosophy, nevertheless makes no effort to determine the content of Christian religion and revelation. Hence it leads into a “completely blind belief,” which is

18 Cf. the letter of Schelling to Hegel from 6 January 1795, in: Briefe von und an Hegel, hrsg. von J. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 1952) Bd. 1, 13. 19 Cf. the letter of Hegel to Schelling from the end of January 1795 and Schelling’s answer from 4 February in: Briefe von und an Hegel, op. cit., Bd. 1, 15–19. xxiv PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM nothing less than “sceptical atheism.”20 This consequence Schelling and Hegel seemed to accept, and they agreed with Flatt and Storr that the theoretical proof for the existence of God cannot be neglected. These young Tübinger did not quite endorse the hermeneutic and historical method that Storr used to produce this proof, but history becomes a key notion for both philosophers. In any case, to understand the development of the philosophy of religion in German idealism, it is important to see that Schelling and Hegel tried to avoid the critique of their teachers in Tübingen that the transcendental interpretation of religion in Kant and Fichte leads to an empty, i.e. content-less concept of belief. In interpreting God as Jacobi did, namely, as the unconditioned that is present in everything conditioned – a concept that can be understood as the true meaning of Christian revelation – there emerges a concept of religion that claims to be reasonable, although one that also is said to be surpassed by reason. This is the standpoint that both Hegel and Schelling em- braced up to the time of Schelling leaving Jena in 1803. The relative short period Hegel and Schelling worked in Jena – Hegel came in 1800 to Jena – resulted in an important di- vergence in the manner of conceiving the absolute. For Schelling, the absolute is unsurpassable (unhintergehbar) but fully present in the finite world. Although during his life he changes his philosophical conception quite a few times, the conviction remains that the absolute or God cannot be surpassed by reason. Hegel moves in a counter direction. This first took place in private discussions with Schelling. The emendations of his early system that Schelling makes in developing his new system of identity (Identitätssystem) were the result of these discussions, as K. Düsing pointed out recently. In the years after 1803, Hegel started to elaborate his own system of philosophy. His aim was to elaborate the structure of the absolute itself. This becomes very clear

20 Johann Friedrich Flatt, Briefe über den moralischen Erkenntnis- grund der Religion überhaupt, und besonders in Beziehung auf die kantische Philosophie, (Tübingen: Cotta 1789). INTRODUCTION xxv in his second major publication, the Wissenschaft der Logik (1812/16). According to Hegel the absolute cannot be a structure enclosed in itself, but must be reasonable in itself. If the absolute is present in the finite, as he claimed, philosophy cannot stop with a system of the mediation of this absolute in nature and spirit, but must also mediate the structure of this mediation. Otherwise, he held, it could not be proven whether it was truly the absolute that was at stake in our knowing. Hegel’s Wissenschaft der Logik sought, at least in inten- tion, to unveil the inner structure and essence of the absolute. In Hegel’s words the Logik expresses the thoughts of God before the creation of nature and finite spirit. The development of these thoughts is structured according to the absolute itself, i.e. the absolute idea. The structure of reality is submitted to this absolute. Essential for Hegel is, of course, the belief that God, i.e. Jesus Christ, did walk on the earth and spoke to us. Without this revelation, it would be impossible to have any true knowledge of the absolute. In this respect revelation seems to be presupposed by Hegel’s system of philosophy. In contrast to Hegel’s time, in our time it is possible, or even bon ton, to deny or repudiate the Christian belief in revelation. The question then is whether Hegel’s philosophy must also be put aside, since it seems to presuppose revelation. One proposed answer has been that, in this case, the truth of the Christian religion is no longer relevant for philosophy. The same holds true for theology, in as much as theology is conceived as a science. The result seems to be that the Christian religion and philosophy, i.e. science, cease to use the same concept of truth. What is true for science is not necessarily true in religion and vice versa. But what is the truth of this statement itself? How is it possible to distinguish reasonably between two different realms of truth, without simultaneously surpassing these realms with a kind of meta-truth? Religion and belief, philosophy and reason seem to be indivisible in every discourse dealing with truth. Does dividing them from each other, as for example Jacobi did, lead to a position that finally does not satisfy either religion or philosophy? This was at least xxvi PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM one of the central questions posed in classical German philosophy. Nor is the question yet closed in our time.

Let us now briefly look at the individual studies in this book. The contributions have been ordered in a chronologi- cal way. Beginning with Walter Jaeschke’s contribution which can be considered as a general introduction to the problematic of religion in German Idealism, we move to Mar- tin Moors’ account of Kant’s positioning of religion within the moral schematism, followed by Daniel Breazeale’s discussion of Fichte’s Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (1792). These are followed by several contributions on Hegel’s philosophy of religion by Ludwig Heyde, Stephen Houlgate, Sander Griffioen and Tom Rockmore. The book concludes with a reflection by William Desmond who looks back at the endeavour of German Idealism to offer a philosophical interpretation of religion showing the poverty of reason rather than its power. While the book does not cover all the possible positions available within German idealism, nevertheless its aim is to highlight some of the major issues addressed by many of its significant thinkers.

Walter Jaeschke’s contribution, “Philosophy after the Death of God,” takes its starting point in Hegel’s catchphrase that “God is dead.” This indicates a crisis in philosophical theology that, so Jaeschke claims, is part of the internal consti- tution of this theology itself. The endeavour to express the thought of God by means of reason seems to explode all formulations of that thought from inside out. This explosion is demonstrated by three topics that constitute the historical and systematic preconditions of the philosophy of religion around 1800: the person and attributes of God, the theme of theodicy, and the topic of physico-theology. At the end of the 18th century the crisis of philosophical theology seemed to end in an atheism of theoretical reason and in the resignation suggested by the phrase “God is dead.” Never- INTRODUCTION xxvii theless, this did not mean the end of philosophical theology. On the contrary, philosophical theology was replaced by, and in some instances transformed into, a philosophy of religion. Jaeschke outlines the three different options taken, leaving aside a fourth option, one that gives up philosophy and remains content with what might be termed a non-philosophical, positive religion. The first option sought the modification of philosophical theology in consonance with the intellectual potential of the philosophical concept. It modified the theistic God in the direction of a pantheistic one. The neo-Spinozism of Lessing and Herder can be seen from this perspective. Instead of calling reason into question, it was rather the traditional conception of God that was rejected. The second option consisted in the retention of the theistic conception of God at the cost of abandoning the instruments of traditional philosophical theology. The means of theoretical reason were replaced by those of practical reason. This marked a transition from rational or physico- theology to an ethical theology. Kant’s doctrine of the postulates is to be understood as such an option. Here for the first time the idea of “philosophy of religion” appeared, in the sense of “a doctrine of religion by philosophical means” dealing with the person of God and the immortality of the soul. Kant’s purely moral conception of God was thus connected with a purely moral interpretation of religion. The conceptual shortcomings of the Kantian ethical theology were shown by Fichte. Fichte no longer conceived of the moral world-order as something on the basis of which one could draw conclusions about God: he thought of that world-order as God. With that contention the first link between an ethico-theological concept of God and a moral interpretation of religion came to an end. The third option was the one found in Schelling’s book on Human Freedom. Schelling tried to avoid the problems of theodicy by incorporating into the very concept of God the difference between the ground of His existence, namely nature in God, and His existence. xxviii PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM

These three forms of reaction to the crisis of philosophical theology still operated within the perspective of a re- formed philosophical theology. Jaeschke argues that philosophy of religion as a distinct discipline only arose in terms of conditions expressed by the feeling of the death of God, namely, at that moment when any self-evident re- course to a belief in God, whether it is Biblical or philoso- phically-theologically grounded, had forfeited its indubitabil- ity. From this point on philosophy of religion tends to con- ceive religion as a cultural phenomenon that, for the most part, is compatible with other forms of spiritual life. Only under this condition can religion become the legitimate object of philosophy. Such a view of religion we find, for in- stance, in Schleiermacher’s speeches Über Religion and in the idea of a new mythology. Religion is considered primarily in terms of its social function – its political power of integration as well as its aesthetically constituting power. Religion thus conceived, however, ceases to have any philosophical- theological significance. One of the advantages of such a new discipline of philosophy of religion by comparison with traditional philosophical theology is that it does not have to ascertain at the outset, and by means of rational argument, the reality of its object, namely “religion.” Further, via the path of religion as a given phenomenon, it can turn to the thought of God. The problem is here that if this new discipline does not take the idea of God merely empirically, it nevertheless seems still to have need of that rational philosophical theology, to the de- mise of which it owes its existence. If this new discipline does indeed speak of God, it can as little ascertain God’s existence as can philosophical theology. Leaving to one side later developments in the direction of an atheistic critique of religion and an empirical science of religion, the only solution here seems to be a change of the concept of God. Hegel’s philosophy of religion can be read as pursuing such a change. His philosophy of religion is also a philosophy of religion after the death of God – i.e. after the death of the personal God of traditional philosophical theology as well as of traditional religion. Religion is no longer defined as the relation to something divine external to religion itself, but it INTRODUCTION xxix is the self-consciousness of spirit. This solution is more than just a consideration of religion as a spiritual-cultural phenomenon; it still remains a kind of philosophical theology – though a philosophical theology for which the death of God – the old God – has paved the way.

In “Kant on Religion in the Role of Moral Schematism,” Mar- tin Moors shows that Kant developed his philosophy of religion according to a double-sided methodology: on the one hand, a scholastic sense, one the other, a cosmo-political sense. Both perspectives have relevance for Kant’s philosophy of religion. With respect to religion in the scholarly sense, philosophy plays a critical role. It determines the place and function of religion within a scientific system, and in so far as it draws certain limits, it restricts religion’s claim to truth. By contrast, religion in the cosmo-political sense has a bearing on Kant’s philosophy of hope. In Kant’s view of hope both theoretical and practical interests of reason are brought together. Religion can offer some answer to the question as to what human beings can hope for. In this context religion is not limited by critical reason; rather it confronts human reason with its own finitude. Moors’ thesis is that Kant, at several structural moments, deploys his theory of schematism in order to give a rational footing to this idea of religion. Kant does indeed determine the essence of religion in a merely functional way: religion is a function of moral schematism. Thus Kant opens three possibilities which grant religion its proper truth and essence within the realm of pure practical reason. These possibilities are concerned with three moments of finitude of which Kant speaks in these terms: 1) an analytic of finitude in which the moral law is presented, especially in connec- tion with the moral constraint that is particular to this law (duty); 2) a dialectic of finitude, in which the idea of the highest good is presented; and 3) the drama of finitude, in which is presented the battle of the good against the evil principle for dominion over the human being. On three oc- casions, defined in terms of the finite situation of our practi- xxx PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM cal reason, morality leads inevitably to religion, or, more precisely put, to the religious affirmation that there is a God. Concerning the limitations of reason, Moors stresses that these limits are not intrinsic to reason itself but to the fact that practical reason must deal with sensibility to realize its natural end, and this makes the use of a schematism necessary. In the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft this schematism is provided by the doctrine of the types which operates on an objectively logical level. But according to Moors, still another schematism is needed that would operate on the subjectively logical level. The definition of this type is concerned only with an intellectual representation of the universal lawfulness of nature according to which the law of freedom might be realized in concreto. Duty, however, is to be realized practically and thus it confronts practical reason with its incapacity and finitude. It is religion, Moors claims, which allows Kant to offer a moral schematism on subjectively logical grounds. With regard to the analytic of finitude, Moors introduces religion as an answer, on merely subjective grounds, to the need we have to make moral constraint intuitive to ourselves. By thinking moral obligation as the content of God’s will, duty reveals in itself a momentum of finitude. With regard to the dialectic of finitude, Moors refers to the impossibility of human reason being the cause of the synthesis of morality and happiness. Hence arises the need for a postulate of the existence of God, of a supreme cause of nature which possesses a causality corresponding to moral intentions. Only through religion is it possible to realize the harmony of my will with that of a holy and beneficent author of the world. With regard to the drama of finitude, Moors draws atten- tion to the finitization of human reason, in that there seems to be some perverting conflict between two moral incentives, namely, the moral law and the law of self-love. Moral religion is introduced by Kant in terms of its power to restore our original disposition to the good. Moors refers here to Kant’s philosophical Christology. For Kant Jesus Christ objectively represents the functional meaning of the original INTRODUCTION xxxi model. Taken subjectively Jesus Christ becomes a working exemplar who functions to make the idea of a human being morally pleasing to God into a model for all human beings. Thus this moral Christo-centered religion is assigned the role of a schematic mediation. Moors concludes by affirming that for Kant the depths of a finite human mind supply the philosophical coordinates in which the life of the human soul is enacted, both in theoretical and moral interests. This finitude manifests itself in three different shapes: 1) in the definition of moral obligation; 2) in the idea of the possibility of the unconditioned totality of the object of pure willing; 3) in the representation of the combat which a person should undertake against the impulses of radical evil within himself. With regard to these three considerations, religion has a role to play in terms of its schematizing function

In his discussion of Fichte’s Versuch einer Kritik aller Offen- barung Daniel Breazeale focuses on Fichte’s theory of the postulates of reason and their relation to the concept of revelation. He offers a critical evaluation of this text, stressing less its Kantian roots as the more original, in some cases, pre-critical features of Fichte’s theory of revelation. The Versuch is an effort to show that certain religious concepts are rationally justifiable, albeit not by purely theoretical or speculative reason. In line with Kant, Fichte deduces the idea of God as something we simply must presuppose as a condition for achieving practical reason’s final purpose, namely, the highest good. As for freedom, however, Fichte refuses to consider it as a postulate of reason. It is an original datum in its own right: not a postulate but a premise. The first postulate Fichte deduces is that of the “causality of the moral law in all reasonable beings.” From this immediately postulated causality of the will it is but a short step to the postulate of God’s existence. Also immortality is de- duced. What is characteristic of these postulates is their certainty. As compared to the moral law, however, which is xxxii PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM immediately certain, they remain theorems and, as such, can never be practically binding upon anyone. The postulates are only subjectively necessary. Making the link with religion, Fichte claims to show how the latter has the function of giving sensible expressions to practical reason’s deepest and purest certainties. All human beings require some such assistance and therefore religion is a universal phenomenon. Such a universal religion can be called natural religion. Religion, however, can also address itself to the particular needs, or rather to the specific moral weaknesses of particular individuals, peoples, and ages. To address these needs is the distinctive task of revealed religion. Fichte’s ambition is to deduce the possibility of such a revelation by showing that our interpreting a phenomenon as a revelation is only warranted when the content conveyed by the putative revelation is the moral law and its postulates. Moreover, the a priori deduction of revelation concerns only its possibility. The concrete application of it requires an additional act of reflective judgment, in which one evaluates a particular appearance in the light of the general concept of revelation. Finally, revelations do not have any objective validity. Their validity is purely subjective. This is also the case with the ideas of reason affirmed in the postulates, but the latter possess a degree of certainty, universality and necessity ab- sent in the concept of revelation. Breazeale stresses the fact that there is some ambiguity in Fichte’s notion of subjectivity. Both the postulates and revelation are subjective in so far as they are mere ideas, ultimately grounded by reflection upon the highest principles of subjectivity (freedom and the moral law). Revelation, however, is also subjective in two additional senses: first, an actual revelation is always a sense experience and as such will vary from circumstance to circumstance; second, it is only valid for some, not for all human beings. Though Fichte stresses the distinction between these two forms of belief, Breazeale shows the difficul- ties inherent in their distinction. He stresses the un-Kantian or pre-Critical assumptions connected with Fichte’s distinction. He claims that Fichte’s thinking “was still marked by INTRODUCTION xxxiii vestiges of dogmatic rationalism and that he had not yet fully absorbed the lessons of the Copernican revolution in philosophy nor grasped all the implications of Kant’s re- definitions of ‘reason’ and of ‘objectivity.’” Breazeale’s thesis is that Fichte’s did not purely deduce postulates nor revelation from the pure will. Both deduc- tions appear to involve an empirical as well as an a priori claim. But Breazeale’s criticism goes even further. He denies the truth of the empirical premise by pointing to the possibility of a sceptical or ironic attitude, or even one of existen- tial revolt or tragic resignation towards the existence of God, without thereby giving up the striving to determine one’s will freely in accord with the moral law. Breazeale’s point is that this is a question that can be answered only by an appeal to human experience and not by means of a priori philosophical speculation. Also the distinction between theoretical and practical reason made by Fichte in his Versuch is not acceptable for Breazeale: he doubts whether it is possible to make sense of a purely practical affirmation of the reality of anything. Thus Fichte’s unsuccessful efforts in the Versuch to distinguish the concept of revelation from the ideas of reason seems to put into question the whole theory of the postulates of critical reason, and in particular the dichotomy between theoretical and practical reason as well as the relationship between the realms of freedom and nature. As a result Breazeale concludes by offering a correction of Fichte’s Ver- such in the line of the later Wissenschaftslehre. But here he also asks ironically whether such a Wissenschaftslehre can be more than just “wishful thinking.”

In his contribution, “Faith and Pure Insight in Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes,” Ludwig Heyde describes the struggle between faith and the Enlightenment as developed by Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit. He stresses the surprising result that, in the end, the conception of God possessed by faith hardly differs from the deism of the Enlightenment. Heyde believes that the logic of the struggle xxxiv PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM between these two has some relevance for a systematic philosophical reflection on the relation between faith and reason. He also thinks that it can provide a hermeneutical key in the critical appraisal of contemporary views about human finitude and its relation to the absolute. According to Hegel, faith is the form religion takes within a world in which spirit is alienated. In such a world political power and wealth have become the highest values, though also at the same time they appear to be utterly vain. Faith is both a protest against this alienated world and an expression of it. By way of protest against the lack of substantiality of this world, faith flees to a world “beyond” this one. How- ever, faith remains separated from the world towards which it is in flight. Thus it appears as an uninsightful faith totally opposed to an unfaithful insight claiming to be the pure insight of the Enlightenment. This insight is also a critique of the alienated world, but as the contrary to faith, what is at stake for it is not the content of the world but the form. Here also the spirit elevates itself above the actual world but now through the activity of critical thought itself. Decisive is not what is thought but that one thinks. The Enlightenment ob- jects that faith is concerned with an alien reality, something irrational and contrary to rational insight. However, Heyde argues, this reproach to faith is the result of a misunderstanding of the genuine character of religious faith. Never- theless, it is effective because faith itself suffers from a similar misunderstanding of the true nature of religion. Thus the critique of the Enlightenment appears to be a misunderstanding of a misunderstanding. Both faith and Enlighten- ment are determined by the same logic of the understanding in which the finite and the infinite, nature and supernature, earth and heaven, immanence and transcendence exclude each other. On the one hand, the Enlightenment reproaches faith for being concerned with an absolute “other,” alien to self- consciousness, presented to it by mendacious priests. On the other hand, it declares the object of faith to be produced by consciousness itself. As a consequence of this Enlight- enment criticism, faith becomes anxious about forms of an- thropomorphism and purifies God of all his predicates, INTRODUCTION xxxv thereby reducing God to an empty, indeterminate transcendence, similar to the deistic God of the Enlightenment. Faith becomes itself an Enlightenment, though an unsatisfied one, given that it is nostalgic for what it feels has been lost. In this way faith prepares its own downfall, entering into the logic of its opponent and destroying the dialectic of the finite and the infinite, essential to religion. Heyde’s conclusion stresses the fact that when we think of God and religion in the manner shared by both faith and Enlightenment a fruit- ful thinking of God is blocked.

Stephen Houlgate offers an exploration entitled “Religion, Morality and Forgiveness in Hegel’s Philosophy,” in which he argues that for Luther and Hegel religion is more than an instrument of moral education as it is for Kant and Nietzsche. Like Luther, Hegel’s religious position is post- moral. Though religion, and particularly the Christian religion, presuppose that we first recognize moral obligations, its basic content is not to be reduced to that. Houlgate starts with Hegel’s interpretation of the myth of the Fall. According to Hegel, the Fall is not to be considered as a morally evil act, but first of all as indicating the fact that human beings must leave their natural state: they should be conscious, free and responsible beings. As soon as they recognize this, they become moral beings, imputable and capable of doing evil. In that sense, the Fall is a fall into morality, and therefore also into sin. For Hegel knowledge, the result of eating from the tree, divides us from God by making us ashamed of our naturalness and conscious of our separate identity; at the same time, it unites us with God by allowing us to share God’s own understanding of good and evil. Hegel believes that Christianity requires that we become moral beings, if we are to become fully human. We must learn the difference between good and evil and accept that we have a duty to do what is good. We must also accept that we are responsible for our actions and must take the blame when we fail to do what is good. Yet, pace Nietzsche and Kant, Christianity, for Hegel, does not establish morality as xxxvi PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM the supreme authority in our lives. Indeed, Christian faith is the belief that the demands of morality can be fulfilled only if morality does not reign supreme. Faith asserts that we can become loving beings only if we stop trying to love through our own moral efforts alone and let ourselves be taken over by the Holy Spirit. It also asserts that we can become loving beings only if we accept that we are not subject to absolute, irrevocable moral condemnation, but are for- given when we go wrong. Christian faith, Houlgate concludes, is the belief that we meet the demands of morality most adequately when we become post-moral children of God.

Stephen Houlgate’s exploration is followed by Sander Grif- fioen’s reflection on “Hegel’s Philosophy of Christian Religion Placed against the Backdrop of Kant’s Theory of the Sub- lime.” The leitmotiv of his discussion is that “the finite does not hinder.” According to Griffioen, a basic element in Hegel’s philosophy of incarnation is that finitude cannot hinder human beings from reaching their destiny. Referring to an important text of Hegel about Incarna- tion, Griffioen tries to show that death is not the end of life but rather a transition to spiritual presence, in which the finite is integrated, yet without vanishing, as it seems to do in the Spinozistic philosophy. In order to understand this move we need the Hegelian notion of sublation. However, to understand that the finite is sublated we must keep in mind that the finite refers both to human frailty in its externality as well as to the finite moment in the divine life itself. In so far as finitude refers to the first element, it is eliminated; in so far as it refers to the second, it is integrated. Both mean- ings are to be connected. Crucial is the fact that if the finite receives a justification as being sublated, it is so only in so far as it is “a vanishing moment.” In order to make clear Hegel’s position vis-à-vis the meaning of Incarnation, Griffioen draws a parallel with Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft. First, Kant stresses the inade- quacy of the faculty of sense to grasp a given object as a INTRODUCTION xxxvii whole; and yet the human mind retains a sense of being called to overcome this condition. Second, Kant refers to the sublime in order to demonstrate our moral power. According to Griffioen, Hegel reads Incarnation as a spectacle in Kant’s sense of the word. Its purpose is to demonstrate to the senses and the intuition that these faculties are inadequate. At the same time this spectacle elicits in the onlooker the inner assurance of his higher powers turning him into a participant of the spectacle. When stressing that finitude is to be integrated into the movement of truth, Griffioen affirms that in a certain sense the integration is never complete. There always remains a remnant of un-integrated, brutal finitude which compels us to climb the ladder to the true standpoint again and again. This, he argues, is not just true of the many who need religion, but also of the philosopher. Griffioen claims that German Idealism, be it Kantian or Hegelian, can only come to terms with the finite as a passing moment. The passing itself has little of the triumphant March of Mind with which Idealism is commonly identified. Griffioen suggests that Hegel’s philosophy of the Christian religion and Kant’s theory of the sublime try to answer the same question: how the painful experience of the inade- quacy of finite modes of understanding can be combined with a joyful assurance as to what constitutes human dig- nity.

In his discussion “Hegel on Reason, Faith and Knowledge” Tom Rockmore considers Hegel’s contribution to the epistemological relation of faith and reason. He takes into consideration Hegel’s position that faith is to be incorporated as a moment within reason. Reason indeed cannot demonstrate itself, but depends on faith in reason. Thus Rockmore offers an epistemological approach to Hegel which is quite uncommon, since it is an approach more commonly found in the way Kant is read. Hegel distinguishes epistemological faith from religious faith, but sticks to faith in reason. He rejects religious faith because of his xxxviii PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM rejection of a representational approach to knowledge (the so-called correspondence theory). But he rejects the idea of pure reason as defended by Kant as well. According to Hegel, it is not possible to elucidate the conditions of the possibility of knowledge in general for all rational beings. It is only possible to elucidate concrete conditions for finite human beings in a particular situation. For Hegel, Rockmore argues, knowledge is the result of the objectivity and content which emerges from thinking. Knowledge claims are justified through their relation to spirit understood as an impure, situated, contextualized, historical form of reason. Claims are accepted or rejected through their coherence or lack of coherence to the more basic convictions present in the wider context at a given historical moment. Connecting Hegel’s view of knowledge with his conception of the spirit, Rockmore therefore defends a Hegelianism that is contextualist, relativist and historicist. Especially the contextualist character of Hegel’s position brings him close to that of Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein, however, did not go as far as to link contextualism with history, whereas for Hegel they are inseparable. Rockmore himself considers the Hegelian standpoint to be the correct one. Hegel, he concludes, distinguishes between epistemological faith and reason. Like Kant, he isolates reason from religious faith, but he does not isolate it from faith as such. Hegel understands that the most promising approach to knowledge lies in a historicized form of contextualism. Since we cannot know that reason tells us the way the world is, and reason is our only epistemological tool, we must have epistemological faith in reason.

The book concludes with a more general study by William Desmond concerning “Religion and the Poverty of Philoso- phy.” Desmond’s point of departure is the impression that philosophy can be quite a poor interpreter of religion by comparison with the richness of religion itself. However, he corrects this impression by pointing to the fact that the richness of religion itself is not separable from its sense of INTRODUCTION xxxix its own poverty. “Religion,” Desmond argues, “is richest when it confesses its poverty, just in relation to what ex- ceeds all human efforts, religious or other.” He suggests that something analogous might be said about philosophy as well. Desmond thus explores the possibility of a philosophy of religion that would not understand itself as an endeavour to interpret, understand and judge religion. Instead of assum- ing that there is only a one-way intermediation of religion and philosophy (from religion to reason), he suggests that there might be a two-way communication between them. This two-way communication suggests that philosophy accept its own poverty and seems to be beyond the scope of Hegel’s of absolute knowing. Desmond does not want to ar- gue against knowing, but he wants to put it within certain limits. In the line of Cusanus he stresses the fact that, at certain limits, one knows that one does not know. He exam- ines the possibility of an other knowing that may resurrect our mindfulness of what was most energetically intimate to faith. Faith seems to ask for a knowing that is different from both a “monstrous” instrumental reason and from an ambi- tious idealistic, Hegelian reason, since both turn out to be forms of reason that is only interested finally in mediating with itself. Desmond, by contrast, refers to the biblical idea of becoming “poor in spirit.” He asks for a “saving knowing” that would be concerned with more than mediating with itself. Faith, Desmond admits, seeks understanding because of its intrinsic claim to being rational in some way. However, he argues, there remains some indeterminate dimension within religion or faith that cannot be grasped by reason, but which in a sense might be considered not as a poverty as compared to the determinacy of philosophical reason, but rather as an “overdeterminacy of the indeterminate in the surplus of its transcendence as other.” Here Desmond refers to an elemental conception of faith as confidence or fidelity. Instead of taking the standpoint of philosophy whereby it considers itself as almost self-evidently superior to faith, Desmond asks whether philosophy is not seeking the other to itself, trying to think what is other to thought thinking xl PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN GERMAN IDEALISM itself. Instead of scientific understanding, Desmond suggests, we need a new reverence, and perhaps a new kind of saving knowing. Desmond thus opposes himself to the Kantian and Hege- lian traditions both of which have the tendency to expel the other and leave no room for saving knowledge. Saving knowing is termed by Desmond as “an understood and affirmed intermediation, binding the singular self, the communal and the divine; and it is enacted dramatically both in the religious mimetics that are the rituals or sacraments of a com- munity, and in living itself in the configurations of ethical life that embody our willingness to participate in saving, and this by keeping and realizing properly, the promise of our being.” Whereas Hegel claims that philosophy has a richer form than religion and thus supersedes it, Desmond suggests that religious reverence lives more intimately with the primal confidence and that it is more faithful to the origin than philosophy. Therefore the religious double as “Vorstel- lung” might be a truer image of the living, true One, just in keeping open the reference to transcendence as Other. “Its power to keep open may be the essential poverty of the religious image, which just as poor, is the rich power to open up a way to transcendence, or for transcendence to come into the between, with no reduction of the otherness of transcendence. Thus the constitutive ambiguity of the religious image would not be a defective poverty, but an effective one, and therefore a rich poverty.” Thus philosophy appears to be poor as compared to the poverty of religion. This “poverty of philosophy” brings Des- mond to the Marxist position which univocally reduces the equivocity of the Hegelian position by negating any kind of transcendence, in the direction of an entirely humanistic position. Marxism considers God to be the false double of humanity, humanity which constitutes the true One. True humanity must be redeemed from God as the false double. The saving knowing of philosophy now seems to consist in our being redeemed from God. Desmond, however, argues that philosophy here risks merely recreating itself as the false double of God. He points towards a different reading of the poverty of philosophy, fo- INTRODUCTION xli cusing on reverence as being crucial for philosophy itself, as well as for religion. Religion can be thought of as rich in reverence, thus can be seen as closer to the primal reverence for the origin out of which determinate religions and philosophies take more definite form. According to Desmond, there is an inward otherness, a “more,” to thinking itself that is not completely self-mediated in this or that form of determinate mindfulness. Desmond’s point is that religions are often closer to acknowledging this more primal “more;” this links religion to art, which also seems to share the same reverence for this “more.” And he suggests that philosophy should learn to recognise its debts to “secret others,” seeking for a new confidence, in the face of the loss of confidence typical of nihilism. Instead of the Hegelian absolute knowing which is a knowing that claims no longer to feel the need to go beyond itself, Desmond proposes a knowing that knows that it must exceed itself into what is beyond it, precisely because what originates it is always beyond it.